In the beginning

Having been raised in a Jesus loving home, my homeschool curriculum involving Intelligent Design and Biblical prophecies fulfilled, my knowledge of modern day scientific explanations for the origin of .. everything.. is extremely superficial. Although these superficial understandings are enough to convince me, they are not enough to convict others, i.e. my family. I admit, "it makes more sense" is too subjective, but what do you do when you're not an expert in evolutionary biology or astrophysics or paleogeology etc.? My father has a Metallurgy PhD from Carnegie Mellon (thesis on ice crystal formation), is Conservative Christian and Creationist, studies relativity for fun. My sister has a PhD in microbiology, is married to a missionary, and goes to conferences on "science and faith" to explain why she's a creationist. I have a BFA. -_-

The crew is seemingly full of smart people who know stuff about stuff. I'm curious about your various knowledges and how they contribute to your understanding of the world and modern day science.

Rand Paul is the Ken Ham of politics. let's compare:

Q-If God created the world 6,000 years ago or so, why are stars millions of light years away?

A-Brendon, what a question! Yes, we know from the dates God gives us in the Bible that He did create the whole universe about 6,000 years ago. When we hear the term light-year, we need to realize it is not a measure of time but a measure of distance, telling us how far away something is. Distant stars and galaxies might be millions of light-years away, but that doesn’t mean that it took millions of years for the light to get here, it just means it is really far away!

My dad and I were debating this. He says that since the universe is expanding, we can't tell if that light was closer, sooner. And that those estimates are based on a homogenous universe. I do not know this stuff well enough, and I was like "red shift something mumble?" (as in, couldn't we figure it out, from the dopplar effect?). Anyone understand on more than a superficial level & can explain?

But what do you do when you're not an expert in evolutionary biology or astrophysics or paleogeology etc.? I do not know this stuff well enough. Anyone understand on more than a superficial level & can explain?

Regarding the general question rather than the specific science question (of which I am not an expert even if I have access to wikipedia and google), I think it's always important to realize that given the information and education you have on-hand, as well as your own personal intutions and experiences, it's better to admit your own lack of information or doubt on someone elses information for what it is. It shows respect, while still allowing you the wiggle room to advance the conversation at another point in time. Nobody is fully prepared for every possible discussion, unless you want to always fall back on some position relatively impossible to argue with like solipsism/nihilism/dickism.

Ok, so pretend a star is 100 light years away. That means it would take 100 years for a photon emitted from that star to reach your eyeball. When you see that star in the sky you are seeing it not as it is now, but as it was 100 years ago.

If someone says the universe was created 6000 years ago, but we can see a star that is over 7000 light years away form us, then that means that the universe has to be at least 7000 years old. We can see the star in the sky as it was 7000 years ago, which means that the photon was emitted before they say the universe began.

However, if I were a creationist, here is what I would say to that. I would say that when god created the universe 6000 years ago, he put the star 7000 light years away and put the photon already 1000 light years closer to us and on its way to earth.

You see, once you accept that an an omnipotent being that exists you can use it to explain anything and everything. Why is there evolution? God controls the DNA! If there wasn't evolution, why are there fossils? God put them there!

This is why the skeptical and atheist communities have the same fundamental arguments we bring up all the time. The Flying Spaghetti Monster/space teapot, the logical impossibility of omniscience/omnipotence, etc. You must first understand that there is no omnipotent being you are forced to find explanations for things other than "god did it." Once you are that far, science enters the building.

As Apreche pointed out, omnipotence is another one of those "you can always fall back to this" positions. None of them are necessarily wrong either. But arguing that and only that has never really proven useful in my own experience.

This is why the skeptical and atheist communities have the same fundamental arguments we bring up all the time. The Flying Spaghetti Monster/space teapot, the logical impossibility of omniscience/omnipotence, etc. You must first understand that there is no omnipotent being you are forced to find explanations for things other than "god did it." Once you are that far, science enters the building.

There are lots of atheist no god books out there

Both have them have stated that provided enough evidence, they will consider changing their minds. But I am not knowledgable enough to understand the evidence I may read on anything more than a superficial level, and explain it to them. Given that, I am not inclined to equate the science surrounding origin of universe and life with science surrounding existence of god. Do you see?

As Apreche pointed out, omnipotence is another one of those "you can always fall back to this" positions. None of them are necessarily wrong either. But arguing that and only that has never really proven useful in my own experience.

Yep, you have to argue against the omnipotence itself. I you accept the assumption that an omnipotent being can, and does exist (one can't) then you can use that omnipotent being to explain everything and everything with no counter-argument.

This is why the skeptical and atheist communities have the same fundamental arguments we bring up all the time. The Flying Spaghetti Monster/space teapot, the logical impossibility of omniscience/omnipotence, etc. You must first understand that there is no omnipotent being you are forced to find explanations for things other than "god did it." Once you are that far, science enters the building.

Both have them have stated that provided enough evidence, they will consider changing their minds. But I am not knowledgable enough to understand the evidence I may read on anything more than a superficial level, and explain it to them. Do you see?

That book I linked will definitely help you. It gives you the logical proofs you can challenge them with that are not scientifically advanced in any way.

I grew up as a Christian, and the seed that turned me was omniscience.

I kept wondering how, if god created everything with a perfect knowledge of the future and therefore knew how every one of his creations would act, he could then hold Adam and Eve responsible for acting against his wishes. The fact that he chose to create Adam and Eve despite his perfect knowledge of their inevitable "in" was a de facto endorsement by god of their actions.

I'm not going to step into the "how omnipotence?" argument because we know that circle, I'll just yell "Language Problems!" and then "WITTGENSTEIN!" at the top of my lungs and then cover my ears and run off singing "LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA-LA". Accomplishes roughly the same thing. And sort of leads into the point that the people on this forum are in-fact quite varied in their methods/degrees/types/flavors of skepticism of one form or another, even if they seem like a mostly homogenous skeptic group.

There is no scientifically rigorous argument that can disprove God. Therefore any book that purports to do so is a flawed book.

God is unnecessary for scientific exploration and explanation of our universe, mostly because of the logistical impossibility of including an omnipotent being in the scientific method as laid out by Apreche.

That said, you can't disprove God for exactly that same reason. It's a scientifically moot argument either way.

However, if I were a creationist, here is what I would say to that. I would say that when god created the universe 6000 years ago, he put the star 7000 light years away and put the photon already 1000 light years closer to us and on its way to earth.

First of all, the expansion of the universe complicates things here; that's what vaguelyweird was talking about. Secondly, if you were a creationist, you'd only say something like that if you were really backed into a corner, because it's not really the sort of thing you'd want to say your God did.

This is why the skeptical and atheist communities have the same fundamental arguments we bring up all the time. The Flying Spaghetti Monster/space teapot, the logical impossibility of omniscience/omnipotence, etc. You must first understand that there is no omnipotent being you are forced to find explanations for things other than "god did it." Once you are that far, science enters the building.

The logical impossibility of omniscience/omnipotence isn't very useful, because it doesn't tell you anything about almost-omniscience and almost-omnipotence. The real key (albeit a harder one to get) is to understand that something like "God did it" is, for the most part, not really an explanation at all. On the other hand, in the cases where it actually tries to be an explanation, it fails Occam's razor and doesn't have enough evidence to even be the remotest of possibilities.

That book I linked will definitely help you. It gives you the logical proofs you can challenge them with that are not scientifically advanced in any way.

I don't like the term "logical proofs"; it implies that the arguments are purely logic, which is useless on its own without putting reality into the mix.

The logical impossibility of omniscience/omnipotence isn't very useful, because it doesn't tell you anything about almost-omniscience and almost-omnipotence. The real key (albeit a harder one to get) is to understand that something like "God did it" is, for the most part, not really an explanation at all. On the other hand, in the cases where it actually tries to be an explanation, it fails Occam's razor and doesn't have enough evidence to even be the remotest of possibilities.

Good points. Those all deserve mentioning. And then I feel obligated to say, "And always remember that Occam's razor is a tool. It's incredibly useful, however, it is not sufficient to solve all problems.

There is no scientifically rigorous argument that can disprove God. Therefore any book that purports to do so is a flawed book.

God is unnecessary for scientific exploration and explanation of our universe, mostly because of the logistical impossibility of including an omnipotent being in the scientific method as laid out by Apreche.

That said, you can't disprove God for exactly that same reason. It's a scientifically moot argument either way.

Well, depending on how you define God it can be proved or disproved as much as anything (forgoing solipsism) can be proved or disproved.

Lots of people say god is love. Well, love exists as a concept and a feeling that many humans have and understand. If you want the word god to be a synonym for the word love, then god exists just as much as love exists.

If you define god as an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, immortal man who created the universe 6000 years ago and did a whole bunch of other things that are written in the bible, then I can disprove that particular god just as much as I can disprove Thor, Santa Claus, or the boogey-man.

That book has a clear explanations of god as defined by judeo-christians.

The book has science, but logic is the fundamental assumptions at the bottom of science. In order to disbelieve god you must believe in the assumptions of logic.

I'm not trying to argue against god. I am an atheist, they know this & it's rather problematic since they think I'm trying to make them atheist. The conflation of atheism with science creates an unfortunate barrier due to people's gut feeling/fear/cultural indoctrination about god. These are isolated premises (origin of universe, origin of life, existence of deity) which can be argued individually. Although they are saying "the bible says so", they are not saying "science is bad LALALA". They just haven't been presented any relevant science from say the last 50 years. And I don't understand it enough to explain to people with PhDs in science.

EDIT: they are open to non-literal interpretations of certain parts of the bible.

First of all, the expansion of the universe complicates things here; that's what vaguelyweird was talking about. Secondly, if you were a creationist, you'd only say something like that if you were really backed into a corner, because it's not really the sort of thing you'd want to say your God did.

^

I am honestly just as interested in the general question of

The crew is seemingly full of smart people who know stuff about stuff. I'm curious about your various knowledges and how they contribute to your understanding of the world and modern day science

and

I admit, "it makes more sense" is too subjective, but what do you do when you're not an expert in evolutionary biology or astrophysics or paleogeology etc.?

Yes these is. Choose a particular "god" and examine the suppositions made for the existence of this particular manifestation. In science, a complete lack of evidence for, coupled with reasonable evidence against, is a practical proof that something does not exist.

The only "god" argument that this doesn't work against is the soft "god as a concept" argument, which itself is stupid for a different set of reasons altogether.

But, for all practical scientific purposes, any particular assertion of the existence of a "god" is equally valid to an assertion that the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists, and is effectively disproven by all inquiry and evidence to date.

I don't agree that only "God as a concept" is disprovable. I guess it depends on how you define that. I think that the existence or non-existence of an omnipotent or near-omnipotent being responsible for the initial creation of the universe, heck, maybe even the "collection" of the souls of the deceased, is not rigorously provable or disprovable.

It's when you start anchoring "God" with assertions in the Bible, etc, that scientifically rigorous arguments can be made.